IBI is doing Victoria and Park which was approved by the OLT late March, thankfully! It's a gorgeous project that I was able to participate in to some degree and got to see the more detailed choices as well as see in depth things like material choices. But it was a shit show. Our brilliant politicians who sided with the NIMBYs and rejected that project ( which is what made the developer appeal to the OLT) ended up screwing everyone over - particularly our most vulnerable people - because Dov Capital not only got the project approved, but slashed the financial commitment of 2 million dollars which they were going to donate to the Rohr Chabad Centre for Jewish Life as well as to affordable housing units in the city. By half. So council wasted tens of thousands of the developers dollars and our tax dollars on lawyers and proved to everyone they care more about a tiny handful of wealthy property owners downtown, rather than trying to find as much possible help to assist struggling individuals and families who do not own a home and have to try to rent in a world going through dire economic struggles. I'm of course speaking nonsense here but I like to imagine it was their way of saying š to the City of Kitchener council.
But anyway...I think it'll be a long time until we see a firm like Hariri Pontarini do anything here haha. Hiring talented architects is extremely costly, so until the local market attracts more big time developer groups, we're mostly stuck with more modest companies that only have so much financial resources to put into hiring good architectural designers. However even so, there are a lot of smaller firms out there who have great work and aren't as costly as some of the major architectural firms out there, so either way we'll start to see nicer buildings as we move forward.
Kirkor or Turner Fleischer? They're so similar it's hard to pick one over the other. Turner Fleischer will somehow do an okay buildingĀ like NobuĀ in Toronto...but then they also do stuff like The Barrelyards, which look like any generic Drewlo building in Ontario. Or then Kirkor will do something very unique likeĀ 415 YongeĀ in Toronto but then do something likeĀ this junkĀ in Hamilton.
But anyway...I think it'll be a long time until we see a firm like Hariri Pontarini do anything here haha. Hiring talented architects is extremely costly, so until the local market attracts more big time developer groups, we're mostly stuck with more modest companies that only have so much financial resources to put into hiring good architectural designers. However even so, there are a lot of smaller firms out there who have great work and aren't as costly as some of the major architectural firms out there, so either way we'll start to see nicer buildings as we move forward.
Kirkor or Turner Fleischer? They're so similar it's hard to pick one over the other. Turner Fleischer will somehow do an okay buildingĀ like NobuĀ in Toronto...but then they also do stuff like The Barrelyards, which look like any generic Drewlo building in Ontario. Or then Kirkor will do something very unique likeĀ 415 YongeĀ in Toronto but then do something likeĀ this junkĀ in Hamilton.